Monday, July 30, 2007

These suns, though lit by our near star’s light, don’t moon after that primal source, but cite their own chemical marriage. My temporal landscape, stopped by red Rothko on a stairwell when I was nine (his cadmiums stained me to tears, made me wonder how paint contained that sadness) saw time bent into n-folded trails and campfires: I watched Cornell’s scissor-talesbutterfly into mâché-bouquets for dissembling starlets; Rodin’s rough hands cast a die, gambling with the clay-foot Muse; Kandinsky’s radiant topographies map the geography of transcendence. I’ve sat at the fire’s edge as those alchemists fed me visions, stardust recombinant, gold from lead.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

While I'm more than a bit meme-averse, it would be churlish (thanks to Shelly for bringing "churlish" back to my foreground) not to thank Rethabile...and it would be untrue to myself not to break a few rules to boot.

The meme says I'm to:

1. Copy this bit of the post.2. Reflect on five bloggers and write a least a paragraph about each one.3. Make sure you link this post so others can read it and the rules.4. Leave your chosen bloggers a comment and let them know they’ve been given the award.5. Place the award icon on your site.

I'll break the rules on items 2 and 5, and instead just point out that anyone in my rambling sidebar o' links makes my synapses ripple and would be worth a visit or three. (Wally will probably resent the extra traffic, but Susangelique will likely put on a new hat and grin fetchingly.)

Friday, July 27, 2007

"...the way the violent overflow of rain over cliffscleans the sewers and drains of Ithacawhose waterfalls head my list, followed bycrudites of carrots and beets, roots and all,with rained-on radishes, too beautiful to eat,and the pure pleasure of talking, talking and not knowing..."

Thursday, July 26, 2007

"...Only one season becoming another,continents traveling the skyway, the grassbreathing. And townspeople, victims, murderers,the gold-colored straw and barbed-wire hair of the worldwafting over the furrows, the slashed roadsto the door of your office or into the living room. ..."

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Being more than a little eager/nervous about my upcoming course ("Liberal Arts Perspectives" -- the thematic focus is Time) I went to a fabulous store to order a couple of the texts we'll be using. I want to jump in and swim even before the class starts.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

It sang me a song of its own making, radiant-faced, verdant, the birth-song of an ensouled object, a living door shape-shifting around plangent bell-struck passages. Mr. Hoffman (then in his eightieth year) ripe as a pomegranate, brush and knife pendant and glistening like fruit, stained the canvas, began it—did he see something quicken, put his hand on the paint, feel it ripple in its womb? And when he stepped back after the god-act of breathing life into dust, did he smile as angels of every color laced their notes into one shimmering voice, polyphonic and free?

I've been having lots of dreams concerning my upcoming class, concerning the MLA. And almost all of them involve something about Passover, or the exodus of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt.

I wondered at the unusual images, and why I was dreaming those particular dreams.

So, being a good delve-deeper, I did some digging around mystical Jewish sources and my favorite Jewish blog, and found illuminating metaphors that helped me understand some of what this soon-to-start experience means for me right now. (You'll find excerpts from two sources below.)

***

"...[a Midrash states] the most distressing aspect of enslavement in Egypt was the consequence of the oppressive work; [the Hebrews] didn't have enough physical or emotional strength to do Kindess (chesed) for one another. ..."

"... [The Passover journey] isn't just an external journey; in order to have true meaning, it needs to change us on the inside, where freedom really matters. The difference between slavery and freedom, between constriction and expansion, is our state of mind. ..."

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

"Seen from afterward the time appears to have beenall of a piece which of course it was but how seldomit seemed that way when it was still happening and wasthe air through which I saw it as I went on thinkingof somewhere else in some other time whether goneor never to arrive and so it was dividedhowever long I was living it and I was whereit kept coming together and where it kept moving apart..."

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

"I am the little man who smokes & smokes.I am the girl who does know better but.I am the king of the pool.I am so wise I had my mouth sewn shut.I am a government official & a goddamned fool.I am a lady who takes jokes. ..."